HR Policies & Procedures

Performance Management: Balancing Recognition and Impact as an HR Leader

Performance management is like Internet access: essential to the daily operation of any business but taken for granted until it stops working. While everyone understands why you need consistent and high-quality broadband, the obvious benefits of good performance management often go unappreciated.

This is a common sentiment whenever I talk with my fellow HR professionals at conferences and events. Building and managing a performance management program take a huge amount of time and effort. But despite the fact that these initiatives help your business retain top talent, create a feedback culture that keeps people motivated, and ensure everyone has the skills he or she needs to meet today’s goals and face tomorrow’s challenges, it can sometimes feel like a thankless task. But it doesn’t have to.

Though every business leader will say employees are the company’s most important asset, we have to judge leaders by their actions. Sometimes, talent management falls lower on a leader’s priority list, behind developing products, creating marketing campaigns, or closing a big sales deal. And this can be especially true when organizations are in a time of fast growth.

The company I work for, Khan Academy, grew from 40 to 200 employees in just a few years. Although we felt many of the same growing pains as other organizations do, I was fortunate to have a leadership team that supported building a continuous performance management program for our long-term growth. Throughout our journey to date, I learned five valuable lessons about overcoming doubts, fears, and ambivalence to ensure performance management remains a major business priority.

Continuous performance management replaces a heavyweight, low-value, once-a-year chore with a cycle of ongoing conversations around goals, feedback, and development. It ensures that all coaching is timely and useful and keeps everyone focused on achieving what’s most important for the organization. These lightweight touches require less preparation time and will deliver value to both manager and employee immediately.

When you hear your leaders saying “annual reviews take too much time away from work,” that’s your opportunity to implement a more continuous program that captures feedback in real time, encourages managers to act as coaches, and removes tired processes from your agile organization.

A continuous performance process aligns each individual’s goals to the top business priorities. Even when, inevitably, these priorities change, the ongoing nature of continuous conversations allows managers and employees to adjust goals in an agile fashion. More frequent conversations also ensure employees receive timely feedback and have a clearer understanding of their managers’ expectations.

Fifty-eight percent of people believe that annual performance reviews are done for the benefit of the business, not them. That’s why employee development and personal targets are a key part of continuous performance management. It makes employees feel more invested in the performance process, the overall business, and their own careers.

If you’re not sure where to start or what your gaps are with your employees, try sending out a quick pulse survey. Harvesting current data and feedback is key for HR, and knowing your organization’s pain points will help you design a program that engages everyone across your team.

In part two of this article, we will hear more from Young about helping managers become better, getting the help you need, and starting performance management on day one.

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HR Solution Showcase

Workforce Management

Kronos is the global leader in delivering workforce management solutions in the cloud. Tens of thousands of organizations in more than 100 countries — including more than half of the Fortune 1000® — use Kronos to control labor costs, minimize compliance risk, and improve workforce productivity. Learn more about Kronos industry-specific time and attendance, scheduling, absence management, HR and payroll, hiring, and labor analytics applications at www.kronos.com

Talent Management

Saba makes talent management software that transforms the working lives of millions of people, and increases growth and success for thousands of businesses around the world. We help organizations create exceptional employee engagement, with a powerful cloud platform that delivers a continuous development experience - from personalized training and collaboration to real-time coaching, goal-setting and feedback. Today, customers worldwide count on Saba to engage their people, connect their teams, and get the critical insight they need to prove the impact of talent on business success. For more information, visit: www.saba.com